Colorado Killings Fall to 40 Year Low

The Denver Post
The FBI​ confirmed Monday what many local cops have known for some time: crime is down in Colorado, as it is across the country.
Revised figures show Colorado had 120 homicides in 2010, an almost 32 percent decline from 2009 and the lowest one-year total since 1969, according to the FBI's annual "Crime in the United States" report.
Nationally, reported homicides were down 4.2 percent, according to the report.
All violent crimes in Colorado — murder, armed assaults, rapes, robberies and non-negligent manslaughter — were down 5 percent in 2010 from the previous year. Nationally, the decline was 6 percent.
Property crimes such as burglary, larceny, car thefts and arson fell 2.7 percent in Colorado and 6.5 percent nationally.
While law enforcement leaders said it's faulty to read too much into one year's numbers, they noted the state's steady decline in crime over 16 years.
"We're not fooling ourselves: Numbers that go down can and will come back up," said Sonny Jackson, a spokesman for Denver police, which saw a 10-year low of 27 homicides in 2010.
The department has already had 35 this year, he said.
Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which collects the data for the FBI from local agencies, partially credited modern approaches to law enforcement.
"Part of it is definitely smarter policing," he said. "But it's really a combination of things, and, in some years, you get lucky and have fewer crimes."